The raking of debris such as leaves, grass, and sticks often leads to material becoming lodged or wedged in-between the tines of the rake. Rakes may be used to move undesirable objects for example leaves on a surface from an area into a pile. The tines project outward from the rake and are conventionally flexible and evenly spaced. On the other hand, debris is inconsistently shaped which may tend to clog the tines; this is not desirable. The general design of a rake has relatively changed very little since it was first introduced. A conventional rakes design is purposefully engineered to provide a user with a means to move debris in an efficient manner.
The flexible tines and pointed ends of lawn rake tines presents unpredictable and unique issues when moving debris. These issues are compounded by conventional radial tine placement, or fan-like shape, and the vertically bent section at the distal end of each tine to increase efficiency of leaf gathering. This leads to jamming of debris between the various components. A means of more efficiently moving debris into a pile and repeating the process without restriction from debris becoming entangled in the tines is needed.
Various attempts have been made to solve problems found in rake tool art. Among these are found in: U.S. Pat. No. 4,776,158 to Wendell E. Baum, U.S. Pat. No. 3,884,023 to Melvin P. Robinson, U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,591 to Herbert M. Gibson, Jr., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,850,185 to James A. Dimon. These prior art references are representative of self-cleaning rakes with tines.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singly or in combination, is seen to describe the invention as claimed. Thus, a need exists for a reliable self-cleaning rake, and to avoid the above-mentioned problems.